I Watched Cartoons Using Hulu and it Kicked Asses.

Recently, I rerouted my internet connection to obtain an USA IP address. Don’t ask me how because it concerns some nuke threats and political terrorism.

After days of negotiating and working with Mr Obama, I sat down, naked and sweaty, stared at my computer screen and started watching some Japanese cartoons. Now Hulu kicks ass but I have some idea(s) to make it more badass.

Do TV programming, have a list of pre-planned episodes on channels like how you do it on TV.

When I visit the Hulu page, there are like almost 5 million shows on there. So instead of me choosing what to watch, Hulu can set up a Channel mode and choose it for me by planning programming slots. With that, people can still choose what they want to watch or just go to something like a channel mode where you can flick channels and let Hulu do the job of deciding what to watch for you. Of course, they can insert commercials break like how they are doing now for videos. I will actually like that because that will further emulate the feel of watching television, something which I haven’t do for god knows how long. It also helps us to discover new shows or shows that we wouldn’t have watch so it might garner a new wave of fans.

Sometimes, shows expire to prevent the abundance of free alternative that may affect DVD sales. However, if we can put all this expired shows onto these channels, where there will be only certain amount of episodes shown in a week on a certain timeslot, it might nullify the effect of abundance of free alternative because you have to actually wait for a show to air and doesn’t have that much freedom to just click and watch.

Why it can’t work? There are just too many shows out there; doing programming scheduling will be a hassle. For one, should we mix different mediums such as Japanese cartoons and American TV serials together? Or do we do them separately? If we do them separately, how to we deal with dub and sub if both are available? Not to mention, it will be a lot of works. You need someone to do the scheduling for god knows how many channels every day. If not, you need to devise a new algorithm to automate the process which is as difficult as it sounds. Worse still, all the effort might not payback at all.

Also, the reason why people go to the internet for their entertainment is due to the freedom it provides, so I don’t think a restricted programming schedule will garner any attention. I also won’t be surprise that people find this idea totally stupid because you can always watch the television instead of going on to the internet for that. Last but not least, I bet that there are some legality concerns and such as well.

Thanks to my experience of live streaming for football matches, I kinda like the idea of watching television programs on restricted schedules. I got to watch some interesting obscure German drama and some weird German commercials thanks to that. That’s why I kinda wish that Hulu will spoon feed me on what to watch rather than me clicking on something to watch.

To make it clear, I don’t mean to discard the current system of Hulu but rather, add a new system that emulates the feel of watching TV while keeping the old “choose what you want to watch” option.